I do hope that you are all fabulously well and have had a wonderful weekend. Here in the Luangwa, the storm clouds build and the baby impala have started to pop up all over the place as well as the baby warthogs. Now we wait for the rains to come and the bush to be transformed into the most vibrant green backdrop to all the wildlife. In the meantime though, we have been making the very most of incredible wildlife that we have been seeing.
Before i venture any further i want to remind you all about our Safari Dreaming campaign! This year we have a lovely boxed set of postcards on sale that are sure to whet your safari appetite. For more info on this, have a look at this: RPS presents: Wild Africa Postcard Collection
Right, and now on with the ‘show’….
This year we put in a wonderful carmine hide just downstream from Nkwali which has yielded some fantastic opportunities for birders and photographers alike. The colony is huge and extends some 20 metres along the sheer drop of the river bank. The beige bank is now streaked with white from the sheer number of carmines carefully performing their ablutions outside of their nests rather than in. The constant familiar chirp of the birds fills the air with the occasional interruption from the hippo just a few meters away as they ensure that they are not forgotten about. I am not going to lie, photographing carmines is not the easiest of challenges but it is certainly a colourful one!
Moving on from the carmines, we have been revisited by the wild dog pack that was hanging around earlier in the year. They successfully denned and had their puppies and once the puppies were out and about they disappeared deep into the bush for a few months but over the last few weeks they have come back to visit and have done so with a vengeance. The pups looking wonderful and healthy and the adults as well, and they have all been terrorising the prey species behind camp as well as having a blast on the beach in front of Nkwali and in the small pools of water that remain dotted around.
In other news, the constant flow of animals through camp has been fantastic with elephants, warthogs and mongooses stealing the show but at Luangwa House it has been the giraffes coming to drink that has been absolutely wonderful including a very rare and slightly painfully slow sighting of mating giraffe. We even had some buffalo, looking hot and slightly skinny, skulk down to the lagoon in front of the house to quench their thirst. This year has been a very strange year for buffalo as they seem to have all gone very deep into the bush and there have in fact been very few sightings thus this one was a fab one for the guests to watch as they themselves sat cooling themselves down in the Luangwa House pool.
Hopping across the river, the leopards and lions have been regularly gracing us with their presence, but it has to be said that the young leopard cub that we have been seeing has been a particular highlight for quite a few of our guests.
The two big male lions have also been showing off and guests had a wonderful sighting of them as they tucked into a hippo that they had killed opposite the pontoon but it wasn’t long before the lions were super-hot and very fat so retreated to a nice shady spot breathing heavily and went to sleep.
So for this week that is all the news that I have for you I am afraid so I shall sign off and wish you all a wonderful week ahead with plenty of smiles and laughter and don’t forget to look after one another.
